Greed was
different in the Middle Ages, says Stanford's Laura Stokes
In
16th-century Europe, it was all right to be a rich business person, as long as
you followed societal expectations. Selfishness was frowned upon.
Surveys of
the carnage of the American financial crisis that began in 2008 have revealed
the potent allure of personal gain above all else.
But greed
hasn't always been popular in Western societies.
Stanford
historian Laura Stokes is uncovering how attitudes toward "acceptable
greed" have done a turnaround in the past 500 years. Self-serving behavior
deemed necessary on Wall Street today might have been despised in medieval
Europe. One might even have been murdered for using wealth as a justification
for circumventing societal norms.
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